Google has been tinkering with Project Tango for a few years, but all we've seen from that is some expensive development hardware. At Lenovo's summer event, it announced the Phab2 Pro, which would be the first consumer Tango device. It was supposed to come out in September, but that didn't happen. Now, it will reportedly arrive next month.

Speaking to Droid-life, both sources inside the company and Motorola itself confirmed today that Lenovo has conducted a brutal round of layoffs at Moto. According to DL, over 50% of Motorola's existing US staff have lost their jobs. A 20-year veteran of the company allegedly posted on Facebook that he had been laid off, so it looks like Lenovo is cutting deep at the device-maker.

One source told them that over 700 employees would be asked to leave of the over 1200 Motorola currently employs. No doubt Lenovo hopes to cut costs by integrating much of Motorola's software and hardware development into its own smartphone unit.

Lenovo turned a lot of heads when it announced its latest Yoga design, the Yoga Book. It's essentially a convertible laptop with a fold-back screen, complete with the Yoga line's well-regarded watch band hinge. But the Yoga Book has an ace up its sleeve: instead of a conventional keyboard, it uses a gigantic touch-sensitive panel that includes a dedicated keyboard mode, with virtual backlit "keys" that can be activated at a touch. Windows and Android versions are being made, and the latter is now up for pre-order.

Google's Project Tango, that awesome tech that allows a gadget to map out three-dimensional spaces, is really cool. But it's taking its damn sweet time getting here: Tango was first announced over two years ago and offered as a developer kit tablet last summer, and the first Tango-capable smartphone was supposed to arrive from Lenovo this month. That seems less than likely now - the store page for the Phab 2 Pro has been adjusted from "coming this summer" to "coming this fall."

Lenovo's Yoga Book is what the company is calling, "the first tablet for natural sketching and note-taking," and "the world's thinnest and lightest 2-in-1." What makes this tablet so special? Lenovo's "halo keyboard." Much to the chagrin of typists everywhere, this is a purely touch keyboard, which makes the "thinnest and lightest 2-in-1" claim true. But Lenovo claims over 18 months of development work has gone into testing and improving the halo keyboard, including features such as haptic feedback and accidental keypress detection.

Lenovo has announced the Yoga Tab 3 Plus, a mid-sized tablet that the company claims is better than a portable television, at IFA in Berlin. The Chinese company is specifically touting the Tab 3 Plus's screen and audio.

Microsoft is taking Android seriously, and that means more than sticking quality apps on Google Play. The tech giant is partnering with whomever it can to make its software the first you see when you power on your phone. Lenovo is the latest Android manufacturer to agree.

Jim Wicks, head of design at Motorola Mobility for the past twelve years (that's serious dedication in the tech biz), has left the company according to Crain's Chicago Business. Wicks' official title - Senior Vice President of Consumer Experience Design - makes it seem clear he likely had substantial roles in approving things like Moto Maker, an initiative that provided Motorola customers an unprecedented level of control over the personalization of the physical look and feel of their smartphones.

According to Crain's, Wicks will be replaced by a long-time Motorola designer who also ran Lenovo's MBG (Mobile Business Group) Design Studio, Ruben Castano.

Yesterday at Lenovo's Tech World event, the company demoed two concept products that were, frankly, kind of amazing. A foldable tablet-phone, and a bendable wrist-phone. While the on-stage demo didn't really tell us much about them, I sat in on a talk where we were allowed to take a closer look (though not touch, sadly) at these concept devices while learning more about them though.